Grooviest Covers of All Time: Dave Cockrum Does Marvel Part 1

UPDATE: Clifford Meth thought it might be a good idea--and Ol' Groove agrees 1000%--to mention the fact that he represents Dave's personal comics collection. Those comics are sold to benefit Dave's widow Paty Cockrum as well as The Dave and Paty Cockrum Scholarship, presented each year at the Joe Kubert School for Graphic Art. If you'd like to help support those worthy causes and own a piece of comicbook history, to boot, please visitOwn Dave Cockrum's Personal Comics & File Copies.

Great post!I was lucky enough to get to know Dave alittle before he pasted away by e-mail. Which led to me getting to meet him in person. In sept of 2002 he was doing a small model show in Chicago.

Super nice guy, it was sad to see him in wheel chair. Plus the show was really dead to my shock. Here's the guy who created many of the new X-Men. basically broke & in bad heatlh. I could believe he wasn't the guest of honor atleast one at Wizard world. Or atleast along side Chris Claremont, Byrne, Trimpe & Len Wein.

Anyway thanks for posting this awesome art. If he hadn't gotten so sick, he was going to do a commission for me. Of me as a New X-Men I created.He loved it, because I told him all about it. He was a mutant who could even defeat Wolverine!

He was one of Marvel's best cover artists! It's funny that artists I worshiped, like Perez and Byrne, couldn't really come up with great dynamic covers during this period--but Cockrum, who I was sort of indifferent to on interiors, just produced one great cover after another. (That famous carnival barker cover, X-Men 111, was him, just as an example.)

Hi Chris Wow! I never knew that, or maybe I just forgot? I always loved Dave's art, but your right about his covers being dynamic! I often wonder what might have been. If he hadn't left DC in 74?/75 for Marvel.

I read some where & he also told me. DC was offering him to do Captain Marvel/Shazam. Which he was also a big fan of. But after the falling out at DC. Because some of his art from the Legion of Superheroes. The wedding two page splash, had been promised to him. But was given away to someone else or kept by the editor? But then would we had gotten the New Uncanny X-Men? Or atleast as we knew & know them today?

Being a huge CM fan, can you imagine. If CM had been as big as the X-Men were back then. Also how different his version of CM might have been. I would had loved to see his Captain Marvel VS Darkseid!Would some of his X-Men ended up as CM villains or as members of the LoSHs or foes for them? Holy Moley!

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